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Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Here’s a pretty particular error that I ran into at a customer site. Brand new ESXi 5.0 installs connected up to a NetApp filer with 4 700 GB LUNs presented to them. After going through the motions of presenting the storage to the ESX servers, I was unable to create a DataStore on the LUNs.

Stumped, I opened a call with VMware Tech Support. Here’s the troubleshooting sequence.

Quick search on VMware’s site lead us to this newer driver. After downloading the driver, I imported it into Update Manager for distribution to the ESX hosts. For instructions on how to push drivers via Update Manager, check here.

Update: There also seemed to be a corrupted initiator group on the NetApp that allowed the ESX hosts to see the LUNs but not access them. Recreating the NetApp group completely resolved the issue.

Friday, August 24, 2012

VMworld 2012 is happening this Monday (August 27th – 30th) in San Francisco and if you are not going to be there, you are going to miss some amazing stuff. Fortunately, VMware is doing an admirable job to help combat the depression non-attendees are sure to feel by streaming many of the big announcements live over the web.

For up to date notifications and schedules, register for VMware NOW @ http://bit.ly/VMwareNOW. You will be able to watch live Keynotes, product announcements and even see some cool new demos. While no substitute for actually being there, it will help keep you in the information loop.

If Twitter is your thing, #VMworld hash tag should provide excellent real-time commentary on the events and keynotes.

Of course, don’t forget all the blogs. Every announcement, event, party and session will probably have a blogger diligently writing a summary for your consumption. If you don’t know where to look, check out the Planet v12 feed from VMware.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

I have been meaning to send this out for a while, but just haven’t gotten around to it. Anyway if you are like me you are spending a lot of time in the Registry, I find that I am constantly making a change to an application and tracking it with a tool (RegScanner, RegFromApp, etc.) but sometimes there is no substitute for just good ole eyeballing it. The problem is that usually you have loaded the Mandatory profile in under HKEY_USERS and you wind up scrolling up and down looking for the subtle change that the application made.

Wouldn’t it be nice to just load up another copy of the registry and place them side by side? Give it a shot, unfortunately, RegEdit is too smart for its own good and realizes that it is already loaded, so it just brings the running copy to the foreground. Now try this, one the second launch, run RegEdit –M, there you have it, multiple copies of the Registry editor running! Now you can place them side by side and have a good and proper look.

While we are on the topic of the registry, by now everyone should be familiar with the fact that in the 64-bit world all local machine 32-bit stuff winds up being placed in the Wow6432Node area of the registry, but if you want to really see the registry the same way a 32-bit app sees it, go to C:\Windows\syswow64\Regedit.exe and you will get the same 32-bit view that an application sees. Feel free to combine the two tips so you can verify that the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software really is the same as HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node running them side by side.

Friday, August 10, 2012

Today I decided to test out the Tumblr waters. While vCloudInfo.com is the natural hub for all my ramblings and tech notes, some of the things I want to share are better suited for different platforms. A while back, I set up a Facebook page for my blog and it was very well received [Be sure to ‘Like’ it if you are a Facebook’er]. On it, I syndicate the main posts but also add in quick blurbs, shout outs and pictures that I feel are appropriate within the whole Facebook experience. My thought is that the more avenues for readership and community building, the better. Different people follow and process things differently. Some subscribe via email or RSS feeds, others Facebook and still others Twitter… Enter Tumblr; It is one of the fastest growing social network / blogging platforms around. While primarily used for visual content, I think it will be a great place for all those interesting pictures of things that a tech consultant in NYC would run across. Not really appropriate for the main blog but for Facebook or Tumblr, it seems like a great fit. If you are so inclined, check it out.

Looking back at my iPhone Photo Stream, this new experiment will probably be a mixture of food and Data Centers. Ooooh… And if YOU have any Tech Photos that you want to share – definitely come check it out. Tumblr offers a pretty unique blogging feature that allows for easy reader submissions. I’m positive this community aspect has helped fuel it’s popularity.

So take a picture of your immaculate server rack cabling, your rat’s nest of a datacenter, your latest greatest gadget or some awesome desktop configuration. If you find it neat or interesting, your peers probably will as well. So post it up and let’s see where it goes.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

Ran into a great KB article (2017642) today that diagrammed the process of memory management for vSphere 5. We’ve all used ESXTOP and the vCenter console to check on Host and VM memory before but this concise diagram should help us better understand the information returned by those invaluable troubleshooting tools. Check out the snippets below and the full diagram here.Definitely worth checking out.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

I’ve had these images queued up for QUITE a long time. I was asked about deleting Personalization Data from AppSense. Craig Davis took some time and grabbed these screenshots for me from his lab.

Launch the Environment Manager Console. Navigate to the “Personalization” tab then click the “Connect” button.

Click the “New Server” button to connect to the Personalization Server.

Enter the “Hostname” of the Personalization server, along with a “Friendly” name to identify the newly created connection. Click Add to proceed.

Click the Connect button

Navigate to the “Tools” tab and highlight the proper Personalization Group. Click the “Personalization Analysis” button in the ribbon bar, or right click the personalization group and select Personalization Analysis.

Enter the Username for the user you would like to delete the settings for.

You have the options of deleting parts of or the whole collection of User Data for a particular user.